


Straight To You

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-13
Updated: 2005-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-02 07:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco's been captured. Harry and Remus argue about what to do with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Straight To You

**Author's Note:**

> Written just after _Half-Blood Prince_ came out, these were my thoughts about what might happen down the road. It's still reasonably close to my head canon for the series. The epigraph is from [To You](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16082), by Walt Whitman.

_"I should have made my way straight to you long ago  
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you"_

  


"No, Remus! Absolutely not!"

"Harry, settle down." Lupin's voice trailed off into indistinct murmurs.

"I will NOT settle down! This is so unbelievably wrong, Remus, and you know it. How can you stand there and tell me this is what we're going to do with him?"

"Harry," soothed Lupin. "It's not what it seems."

"Bollocks." Something crashed against the wall. Probably a glass or bottle, from the tinkling and sweeping noises that soon followed. The voices settled into a low counterpoint of growls and protests.

Draco moved away from the door. It wouldn't do to be caught eavesdropping and, once the argument faded, it was more likely that someone would come to check on him. He'd been locked in this room for three days, by his count. Oddly enough, he was relieved by the heavy hasp and bars on the door. At the very least, he knew his captors and had a reasonable chance of predicting what was going to happen to him. 

"Bloody hell, Remus!"

Draco laughed quietly and moved back toward the door. He could understand Potter perfectly well from any point in the room, but it was Lupin he needed to hear. Lupin had the information that was driving Potter mad, after all. Furniture scraped across the floor in the outer room. Draco was startled by a thud against the wall, followed by Potter's hissing voice much closer to the door than anything he'd heard yet.

"I am getting tired of this, Remus. Are we Death Eaters or rational wizards?" Potter was enunciating more clearly than he ever had. Draco imagined his face, eyes blazing green and lips thinned to a dark pink line. When Moody and Shacklebolt had captured them and brought him here - wherever here was - he'd seen Potter. Two years of war had hardened and refined him. He was a man now, not the boy with whom Draco had traded idle taunts and punches for six years.

"Harry, just listen." Lupin's voice was clearer than it had been at any point. _He must be right on the other side of the door_ , thought Draco.

"I'm listening," snapped Potter. "But I don't like what you're saying. Understand this, Remus, and pass it on to whoever told you to get me on board with this plan. I do not believe that hurting Malfoy is going to get us anything he hasn't already told us. I do not think he's holding anything back. Torture is _their_ tool, Remus."

"What do you suggest, Harry?"

"Let him go. Let him decide." Potter's voice was sad and tired. "He's his own man, Remus. Not Voldemort's, or his father's. Not even Snape's, probably, though I've spent hours listening to Snape refuse to talk about Draco."

"Let him go? Moody will never accept that, Harry. Malfoy and Snape are the highest ranking Death Eaters we've got in custody. Who's to say he wouldn't run back to Voldemort and disclose our position, our methods, our membership?"

Potter sighed. "Remus, that's bollocks and you know it. You don't think they're Death Eaters either. Look, stop parroting the party line and just TALK to me, all right?"

"Harry, I'm trying. It's not just Moody's words. I really don't understand why you think you can trust him."

"It's not trust." Potter's response was quick and automatic. "I don't trust him."

"No? But you're willing to risk all our lives on letting him go."

"Risk is a strong word for it." Draco heard someone sit down, heavily. "So is trust. I just don't have any other words for what it really is."

Both rooms were quiet for a while. Draco willed himself to stay silent, in hopes they'd keep talking.

"Look, Harry, I have to go see Moody. Are you all right?"

"Yeah." Potter laughed mirthlessly. "Yeah, I'm just the same as I've been since the night Albus died. Go see Moody. Tell him I still refuse to torture our fiendish prisoners. Tell him - tell him I think Malfoy's too pretty to hurt. He'll probably buy it."

"I'll make sure he understands the message, if not in those words exactly."

"Do what you have to do, Remus."

"You too, Harry. And be careful about it."

Draco listened as Lupin crossed the room, opened the door, and closed it behind him. He sighed and leaned against the wall. Listening to Aurors discuss one's fate was almost as irritating as listening to Death Eaters do the same thing. That one of the Aurors was Potter? That made things far more complicated. Draco decided that he was simply not going to think about a conversation between Potter and Severus about himself. There were just too many ways for that scenario to end in flaming disgrace. 

The cell door opened. Potter stood in the doorway. "Malfoy."

"Potter."

"You heard?"

"Most of it."

"Where would you go?"

"To Severus."

Potter's face fell, just a bit, before he smoothed his Auror expression back in place. "Why?"

"To thank him. He protected me, Potter, and I got us caught. Thank Merlin it was your lot that found us." Draco grimaced. "There would be no genteel discussions about whether it was appropriate to torture us if it had been my family's old crowd." He smiled wryly at Potter. "And also to thank him for not dying of fright when I propositioned him last year." 

If Draco lived to three hundred and ten, he'd never see anything better than the look of shock on Potter's face at this bit of news. 

"You. Um." Potter scrubbed his hands through his hair and started over. "You propositioned Snape."

"Multiple times, in a rather pushy way." 

"Snape."

"Oh, come on. He's rather hot in that forbidding daddy way, don't you think?"

"I am not having this conversation with you, Malfoy." Potter was blushing. "Did anything happen?"

Draco laughed. "No. He's straight, believe it or not."

"Figures."

"Potter! You perv."

"Shut up." Potter entered the room, stopping just out of Draco's reach. "So after you went and apologized for being an aggressive little rentboy, where would you go?"

It was quiet again in the small room. Draco inhaled sharply, took a step toward Potter, and looked him in the eye. "You said risk and trust weren't the right words, but they're good enough for now." He tried to keep his voice steady. "I'd come back. I should have come back to you long ago."

Harry nodded, and closed the distance between them.


End file.
